For 11 years, Mary Beth Greene traveled to retailers all over Alabama and Mississippi as a sales representative. And everywhere she went, her customers asked her, over and over again, for a line of bags in solid colors, at reasonable prices. She had little to offer them.

And when Fairhope native Lisette Normann moved back home with her two young children after working as an artist in New Orleans and Sea Island, Ga., she worked in an antiques shop and was constantly asked where customers could buy Fairhope-themed T-shirts and other items. She drew a blank.

And so, separately, Greene and Normann started their own businesses.

Greene spent 21/2 years developing the perfect bag, the one she knew shop owners were looking for and that customers would purchase and use for years. Her company, MB Greene, which she founded in 2014, now manufactures 12 styles in eight colors - each one with her trademark turquoise zipper.

Normann opened The Fairhope Store, starting out in a small space next to Page & Palette bookstore in downtown Fairhope and, last year, moving into a flagship store on De La Mare Avenue. The Fairhope logo she designed now adorns an array of comfortable, casual and stylish items including Ts, sweatshirts, baseball caps and more.

Now the two friends have started working together to offer Greene's bags with Normann's logo in The Fairhope Store. But Normann is also starting a new, online-only shop, The Orange Beach Store, and debuting a new logo for the beach town that features a cheery orange with the word "Beach" across it.

"We're excited to finally mesh the two," said Greene of her bags and Normann's artwork.

In the bag

After years of calling on boutiques where her customers requested a certain type of bag that they couldn't find, Greene decided she might be able to design one herself. She started networking with vendors and asking lots of questions - and making prototypes of the bags out of paper from her printer, taped together.

She created "a line of essential bags," in which each one is "very functional and very versatile." The bags are waxed canvas on the outside, with vinyl on the inside. "Each bag has a little feature or twist that makes it unique, special, sophisticated and useful," she said. "It's not just a beach bag, It's a tote for wherever you're going."

Her trademark would become the turquoise zipper and handle that unifies the otherwise solid-color bags. "For me, it was really important that it be a quality product they really enjoy and could add to and make their own collection," Greene said.

Though she wanted her products to be manufactured in the United States, she was unable to do that and keep them at an affordable price. Through one of her contacts, she found a team in China that sent her samples of the bags she'd designed.

By July of 2014, she had something to show to a sales rep group in Atlanta. She decided that if the group liked what she showed them, she would quit her job and start selling her line full-time.

"They loved it," she said.

But on that very same day, Greene found out her only sister, Mandy Bagwell - a well-known artist in Montgomery who produced the collectible M. Bagwell line of dinnerware - had died unexpectedly. "My world stopped that night," she said. "It was the best day and worst day of my life in 24 hours."

She was so devastated by her sister's death that she considered giving up on her project. "With encouragement from my family and friends, I decided to go forward," she said.

Greene decided to use her sister's artwork for inspiration. The tag on each MB Greene bag includes a close-up photo of a paint can that Bagwell painted, with stripes of colors that happen to coordinate perfectly with each bag. "Her artwork is a very big part of my branding," she said. "I've got a big banner with her paint can on it in my showrooms."

She also offers a smaller version of her tote bag in the paint can-striped fabric, in honor of her sister. All proceeds from the Mandy Bagwell bag, , which is made in Alabama, go to the M. Bagwell Foundation, which in May will provide its first $1,000 scholarships to students at Morgan Academy in Selma, Greene's and Bagwell's alma mater, and at Montgomery Academy in Montgomery, where two of Bagwell's three children attend school.

Her company "has taken off faster than I thought it would," Greene said. More than 200 retailers sell the line, which is also available through the Neiman-Marcus catalog and this summer will be featured in the Olive & Koko catalog. The bags are also available at www.mbgreene.com.

A dream come true

When Lisette Normann was a child growing up in Fairhope, she liked to tell people that one day she was going to have a store in Fairhope. Already enterprising at 6 years old, she operated a snack bar at Fairhope Pier, selling some of her favorite items like grape Blow-Pops, Nutter Buddies and Push-Ups and earning $1 a day.

Her grandfather, Wallace Milham - who founded The Yard Arm restaurant on the pier - would take her to the bank every day, she remembers, to deposit her dollar. "He was an amazing man," she said. "He treated people like gold."

Normann and her family lived in The Fairhope Hotel, which would often take the overflow guests from the nearby Grand Hotel - some of whom became lifelong friends.

It was those fond memories of her idyllic childhood that led her back to her hometown after she'd cultivated a career as an oil painter in New Orleans, where she lived for 12 years. After a three-year stint in St. Simons Island, Ga., after Hurricane Katrina, she returned to Fairhope "and took time to get my wheels on," she said.

While working at Crown and Colony Antiques, Normann said, customers were always asking her where they could find "something that said Fairhope."

Meanwhile, "Everything I owned had 'Sea Island' on it," she said. "Every T-shirt, sweatshirt and jacket." The wheels started turning in her mind.

She got out her graph paper and started writing the word "Fairhope" over and over again. Finally, some six months later, she had an "a-ha moment" while she was sketching on her porch on Summit Street: She saw a roofline in the "A" that reminded her of the piers jutting out into Mobile Bay. She had her logo at last.

Normann tried to think about what resonated with her when she'd returned to Fairhope. "I remember envisioning driving down Mobile Street and seeing all the houses, the piers, the quaint, sweet feel of this town," she said. And so, she sketched a few of her favorite Fairhope homes and linked them together into a design that appears on the back of some of her T-shirts.

In 2011, she opened The Fairhope Store, selling products that promote pride in the city - so much so that customers email her photos of themselves all over the world, wearing shirts, sweatshirts and hats from her shop.

"We have people who come back every year," she said. "The fact that locals love it is icing on the cake."

Now Normann hopes to help foster the same kind of community pride for another coastal Alabama town, Orange Beach. "I've spent so much time there and loved it," said Normann. But she noticed that "Orange Beach didn't have a brand." Again, she has seen a need and is filling it with her creativity.

The online store, www.theorangebeachstore.com, will offer the same kinds of products as her shop in Fairhope, featuring the Orange Beach logo she designed - which can be interpreted as an orange, a brilliant sun or a beach ball. The items will also include the geographic coordinates for an Orange Beach landmark, Perdido Pass.

Her venture in Orange Beach could be just the beginning for Normann's expansion of a lifestyle brand that started in her hometown. And she's happy to add MB Greene bags to the mix. "We both are doing what we love," she said.

"It's our lifestyle coming through in our products," said Greene. "When you're doing what you love, it comes out in your designs, your product and the way you operate your business."